Sunday, September 21, 2008

Primeval

Season 4, Episode 21: Primeval
Original Air Date: 16 May 2000 When Buffy sees Spike in Adam's cave, she realizes that Spike is intriguing the Scooby gang to destroy their friendship following Adam's instructions. She meets Willow, Xander and Giles and they apologize to each other. They also realize that the monsters were not captured by the Initiative, but actually they are the Trojan Horse of Adam to fight against the commando from inside. One Buffy alone is not able to defeat Adam, the Scooby gang decides to transfer the best of each one of them, i.e., the witch power of Willow, the strength of Xander and the expertise of Giles, to Buffy through witchcraft to make her powerful and capable of fighting against Adam. Meanwhile, Riley finds that he has a chip over his heart and connected to his central nervous system to modify his behavior and obey Adam.
This was one of the first sets I made. I wanted an Adam custom so badly and all the customs that I saw just weren't good...or not what I wanted. I spent a lot of time on this guy. I studied all the details of his body. It is not exactly like the show, as getting very detailed is tough, but this is one of my most treasured pieces.

I made Adam using a wrestling figure. I don't remember which one. He had the perfect face and body. I did cut off one of his hands to sculpt the demon-attached arm. Everything is completely sculpted on this figure. I wasn't going to make his machine gun hand, but since the primeval Buffy had that stance and her background had the doves, I thought, why not? I originally painted the metal parts gray, but later when I got some metallic paint, I touched it up.

Here are some before and after pictures (and before and after with the metallic paint)


Some more shots of Adam.


Here is Adam and Buffy.


I couldn't do a Primeval scene without the help of the 3 other "Scooby members." I had originally made these figures without switching parts. I didn't know you could do that. Willow was easy enough to do. I removed her legs and re-sculpted them in a sitting position. Giles and Xander were very hard to figure out. When I had it done, their butts were not at all good and it looked very bad. I let it go since I just chopped up these parts. When I got a hold of some cheap deluxe Spike bodies, I redid Xander and Giles (because those legs could sit crossed). I re-sculpted and repainted. I only have before/after pictures of my early work. I did take some more recent pictures, but not the before look. Here they are:








This is the newest set-up with figures. My only complaint here (but I let it go) is that in the show Giles had his sleeves up and Xander had his down. I meant to fix that when I was redoing the figures but I forgot.


This was also my first light-up attempt. As you can see my flames started out as a blob of hot glue. I later came across a real flame so I used that. The picture will be hard to see in the dark but just to give you an idea...it's neat!
And finally, since I had the Xander military figure, I made a small scene to go along with the Primeval set. This is when he and Buffy snuck into the initiative with Buffy (dressed as a scientist). I sculpted her lab coat, turtleneck shirt, clipboard, and hair. The device to make the door open is made from Cordelia's purse!
Here is the 3 part set for Primeval!

What's My Line?: Part 2

Season 2, Episode 10: What's My Line?: Part 2
Original Air Date: 24 November 1997 The girl who attacked Buffy turns out to be no vampire but another slayer, Kendra, who assumed her duty while Buffy was drowned dead for a minute and works far more by the book Buffy ignored even to exist. Angel fears to die as the rising sun reaches into his holding place, but is dragged out in time by snitch Willy, only to be sold to Spike, who needs Drusilla's sire to revitalize her in a demonic ritual in an abandoned church which will kill Angel, and allows her first to enjoy torturing the shirtless hunk with holy water. Helping Cordelia escape the maggot-made Taraka order-killer makes Xander spike their formally continuing hatred with hot kisses, twice, a female killer fails to kill Buffy as police recruiter on career day...

I made this scene mainly because I had a miniature backdrop of an organ. I wanted to use that to recreate the scene where Dursilla pulls Spike out of the wreckage of the burnt church. That scene didn't work out and since I started other pieces I instead started making this piece.

I really didn't do any modifications to Spike. I painted his hands black because he had on black gloves. I also added his red jacket under his trench coat.

For Drusilla I used a Drusilla body and a cast of a Fred head. I also used spare arms from a Faith figure. I sculpted the hair and clothing.



Angel is a complete cast of the Graduation Day Angel. The cast process is a difficult one. The piece turned out well enough, but it has rough spots in places I did paint him with burn marks and such since before this scene happened Dru was torturing him.




For the background I took a picture of the stain glass window that was in the background of the church. I then made the alter (since the picture I printed only covered 1/2 of the back plastic panel). The figures are standing really close to this alter, but I didn't have another brown base to make them stand at a distance. It still looks great.

There are a few flaws which you can't see. One is Angel's feet. One of his legs is off the ground. I fixed this by having him stand on a few boards that are laying on the ground of this old church. The other flaw is the part where Angel is joined with Dru's hand with the cross knife. I used hot glue to join the hands. Dru's hand broke during the final assembly so that has been glued. It looks messy close up. Otherwise you wouldn't think to look there.


Here are the finished pieces